Australian mum finds SEVEN deadly vipers in her three-year-old son's wardrobe where he had put some eggs he'd found in the garden Kyle Cumming, 3, had found the eggs in his garden in Queensland, Australia and put them in a box where they hatchedEastern brown snake is the world's second deadliest snake

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UPDATED:

08:02 GMT, 20 December 2012

A three-year-old boy had a lucky escape after his mother found a box of seven deadly snakes in his wardrobe.

Kyle Cumming had found the snake eggs in his garden in Townsville in Queensland, Australia and was given a takeaway container to put them in.

Several weeks later his mother Donna Sim was shocked when she opened the bedroom wardrobe to discover the box full of recently hatched eastern brown snakes – the world’s second deadliest species.

Fatal friends: Kyle Cumming, aged three, found the eggs in his garden and put them in his wardrobe where his mother discovered the baby brown snakes after they hatched

Wildlife carers said Kyle was very fortunate as his mother discovered the eastern brown snake babies before he
took them out to play or before the hatchlings had grown strong enough
to push open the lid by themselves.

Ms Sim said she had given Kyle the
takeaway container when he found the eggs but had not thought more of it
until she found the snakes in her son’s bedroom.

‘I was pretty shocked, particularly because I don't like snakes,’ she told the Townsville Bulletin.

The family took the snakes to a local sanctuary where they were released back into the wild.

Lucky non-escape: Fortunately the deadly eastern brown snakes were too young to be able to escape from Kyle's container

‘He is extremely lucky that his mother
found them before he opened up the container and played with them,’
North Queensland Wildlife Care reptile co-ordinator Trish Prendergast
told the Townsville Bulletin.

‘Otherwise he may not be with us today.’

The eastern brown snake is widely considered the second most venomous snake in the world, behind the inland taipan.

They are common in Australia and are responsible for a majority of lethal snake bites recorded in the country.